


you gotta know when to hold 'em

by coalitiongirl_ficlets (coalitiongirl)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-06
Updated: 2016-04-06
Packaged: 2018-05-31 16:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6477163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl_ficlets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma Swan is twenty-three, pregnant, and desperate– and her best bet for the baby's health and safety is persuading Regina Mills that she's her soulmate. [Soulmate card AU]</p>
            </blockquote>





	you gotta know when to hold 'em

**Author's Note:**

> This is a canon-compliant(ish- I changed Emma’s age when she had Henry) AU inspired by [this post](http://jenmorrisonlife.tumblr.com/post/129789917154) and Ray. 
> 
> Originally posted [here](http://coalitiongirl.tumblr.com/post/130357558433/yet-another-twitter-story-lmao-i-swear-ill-go).

In this world, nearly everything is the same except that from the day you turn sixteen, you can seek out your soulmate. There’s a catch, though: only one card is doled out per soulmate set. If you have it, your soulmate does not. 

* * *

 

Emma Swan is twenty-three and pregnant and very desperate, without a job or a home or anyone. She doesn’t have a soulmate card. 

What she does have, though, is the forgery skills of a con artist. She’s drawn to a little town in Maine when she seeks out a viable target, and settles quickly on the mayor of the town, who is wealthy, single, in her thirties and without any children. She’s the perfect mark. Emma does research and discovers that her soulmate card had been taken twenty-two years ago, long before the mayor had turned sixteen. 

So she forges a card and shows up on Regina Mills’s doorstep, heavily pregnant and with pleading eyes. “I didn't know where else to go,” she says, holding out the card. Regina stares at her, then the card, then back at her with disdain.

Still, though, the card scores her an invite. Emma can figure out the place around her easily, the lonely mayor and the big, empty house, and she knows that Regina won’t throw aside her only chance at happiness. She squirms and waits and Regina says finally, “I’ll put you up at Granny’s.” She barely looks at Emma. 

Which is fine. Emma doesn’t need a _soulmate_. Emma needs someone who will take care of the baby growing inside her. And Regina doesn’t seem to care much for her, but she still arrives in the morning with a basket of apples and an appointment at the hospital for the baby to be checked out. And it’s maybe going to be okay. 

“Why you?” Regina mutters when they leave the hospital with strict orders for Emma to go eat something healthy. 

“Do you think I’d choose you?” Emma retorts, shifting guiltily. Regina takes it as discomfort and puts a hand on her arm, guiding her down the stairs to her car. Her hands are soft, tentative, like her face had been during the sonogram. Emma had chosen so right that she almost feels bad about it.

She stays quiet. Regina is more solicitous over time, visiting Granny’s and making sure she eats right and taking her to so many birthing and parenting classes that Emma’s overwhelmed and very tired of babies. Regina is also terse but kind, offputting but still gentle around Emma, and so attractive that Emma is spellbound by her.

Emma stares at the soulmates card for so long that she can nearly believe that it’s real if she doesn’t think. 

Regina orders Emma into her house in her ninth month. “Someone has to look after the baby,” she says, avoiding Emma’s eyes. “And you’re dreadful at looking after even yourself.” And Emma is moved into a guest room and she awkwardly tries to make breakfasts and tidy up and make herself someone worth ~keeping~ until the baby comes.

(No one has ever kept her before. She can’t force it with a forged soulmates card. Regina won’t keep her after…)

The baby comes and Emma screams and pushes and cries when he’s in her arms and Regina is crouched down beside her. "You should name him,“ Emma says. "I don’t have…I don’t have anyone to name him for." 

She knows what Regina had admitted late one night, about failed adoption attempts and secret dreams and baby names, and Regina takes in a shuddering breath and says, "Henry, then." 

Emma touches her with skittish movements and passes the baby into her arms. "I’m sorry,” she whispers, and Regina whispers back fiercely because she doesn’t understand. “Don’t be.”

Emma talks about adoption for one feeble moment, regretting everything, and Regina stares at her in confusion. "We’re soulmates, Miss Swan,“ she says. "Our raising Henry together is destined. Isn’t it?” Emma wants to tell her the truth but it catches in her throat. She can’t see the softness in Regina’s eyes turn to fury or disdain. She can’t imagine being no one at all to Regina, so she’s silent and rests her hand on Regina’s and gulps back a sob.

Regina says, “It’s been a long day,” and she’s being so gentle that it burns Emma to ashes. “Sleep, dear.”

And soon they’re home and Emma walks upstairs and finds a nursery, brand new and fully stocked. Henry is placed in his crib and Regina guides Emma to her room and there are _fucking_ _roses_  like they’re _fucking_ _married_  and Emma smiles tremulously and curls up in a ball later and wonders when Regina’s real soulmate will come.

* * *

Outside of the house, Regina is still abrupt and cold and snaps at the congratulations given to her and the small girl beside her with a baby wrapped in her arms. Inside it, her eyes are bright when she watches Henry and she makes halfhearted snarky comments at Emma and makes sure she doesn’t wither away inside, hiding from the world.

When Henry is three months old, Graham offers her a job at the station and she takes it, unwilling to think about leaving this town when Regina finds out the truth about her and runs her out of their home. Regina is irritated at the decision. “What will you do with Henry?” she demands. “Why didn’t you ask me?” Emma can’t explain and she just shrinks back and waits for Regina’s fury. But it doesn’t come. 

“Very well,” Regina says. “You should have more here than just this house." 

(She’s still furious the day that Emma goes out with Ruby and dances with everyone and tries to be unafraid. She drags Emma upstairs and hisses to her about her responsibilities and then she kisses Emma and Emma clings to her and hates everything about the whole damned cult of soulmates.) 

Henry gets older, kicking at the bed while they lie on either side and watch him. There are more kisses and then there are so many nights in Regina’s bed that Emma gradually moves into her room. She’s caught between exhilaration and waiting for the other shoe to drop, to open the door one day and find a man on the other side with a card with Regina’s name on it. 

She makes friends in town and she takes Henry out with Regina and she keeps the part of Regina that belongs to Henry and to her (Regina doesn’t belong to her, she reminds) cradled close to her heart.

* * *

Henry turns two, three, four. Emma turns twenty-seven and Regina flinches away from her for the first time then. And Emma doesn’t understand then, not why Regina’s pulling away. She must have seen her card. Someone new must be town. She scours the town and snoops around the house, terrified, and there’s nothing, no clue about Regina’s fear.

"Did I…do something?” she asks finally, twenty-seven and three months. Regina is quick to deny it, but the hard edge that she keeps in the town is all Emma sees now, the woman who’d been disappointed at the girl with her card. 

Regina knows something. Regina must know something. Emma stays in the guest room again, avoids and waits to be cast aside, and they return to being strangers around each other, united only by their son. It’s empty and it’s the best Emma’s going to get, so she offers wan smiles and brings Regina coffee and doesn’t talk about how Regina hasn’t kissed her in almost a month. 

On Emma’s twenty-eighth birthday, she takes a second shift at the station and buys a cupcake from Granny’s and lights a candle, closing her eyes and making a wish. There’s a knock at the door.

“I’m sorry,” Regina says when she walks in, staccato footsteps and wrung fingers. “I’ve been…so afraid.” Emma gapes up at her. Regina shakes her head frustratedly. “I’ve been keeping…so much from you,” she says, and all Emma can think about is the card Regina had slipped into the back of a photo frame of the three of them. 

“I love you and I just…” She laughs almost wildly. “I don’t care about losing to you.” And she kisses Emma and the world shines bright with hope and love and magic and Emma is instantly devastated.

* * *

It’s over. She has parents, she has a destiny, and the thing that had brought her to Regina had been much more ominous than the practicality of a chosen soulmate. Regina is the _villain_ , the _enemy_ , and the town wants her dead.

Emma throws herself between a mob and Regina and she’s shouting in front of Regina’s sneering face, words that hardly make sense anymore. “She’s Henry’s mother! She’s my…my…” She forgets in that moment that it is fiction. "She’s my soulmate!“ she snaps out, and Snow White’s face softens and darkens hopelessly. "I can't–” Emma says.

The mob disperses and Emma shoves Regina inside, shoves her into a room and kisses her until Regina is holding her tight and Emma is shaking and gasping words of hate and love into her shoulder. Henry wraps his arms around their legs and Regina says, “It isn’t enough, is it?” with a certain kind of hopelessness. 

“What choice do I have?” Emma whispers. “I’m your soulmate. I don’t have a choice.” She says it again and again, to Regina and Snow and David and everyone else in town until she can finally begin to believe it. 

At night she lies in the Evil Queen’s embrace and refuses to contemplate the lie she’s living. Someday Regina’s soulmate will come. All soulmates are destined to meet. Someday there’s going to be a soulmate with a real card and Regina will laugh at her and Emma will run.

Time passes. There’s a portal, there’s Regina’s mother, there’s pain and sorting out who their family is now. 

Emma comes to their house and hides in Regina’s arms and lies, lies, lies. Regina whispers curses and promises and suddenly one day she’s standing in the mines with her hands out and a promise of _Let me die as Regina_.

They win together. They may not be soulmates but they have that, at least, and a true love that isn’t true at all.

They go to Neverland and curl up together and Regina murmurs, “I do still love you." 

Emma says, uncomfortable, "Well, we’re soulmates, right? Of course we love each other." 

Regina strokes her hair like she had when Emma had been young and pregnant and terrified and says, "We’ll find him,” and it’s just as comforting now.

They find Henry, they save Henry, and then another curse comes and Regina gives them new memories. 

* * *

They come home, and things are different now. Emma can feel the weight of the false soulmates card now more than ever. There is a man in town who pursues Regina like he thinks he has a chance and Emma watches him warily. He would have said something if he’d had Regina’s card, wouldn’t he? If he has everything that would tear them apart?

And then one day he’s in their house on some errand from Snow, and he plucks out the card from the frame and–

It isn’t that Robin Hood might have a matching card that’s the issue, Emma realizes in a flash. It’s his furrowed brow and the eye of one thief staring at another’s work as he says, “This is a forgery." 

Emma freezes. 

Regina says, her eyes still on the message Snow had sent to them, "I don’t think that’s your concern, is it?" 

Robin sputters a bit and says, bewildered, "I thought you’d want to know?" 

"Of course I know,” Regina snaps. Emma stares at them without comprehension, certain this is the moment she’ll be forced from her family for good.

Regina says again, “And it’s still none of your concern. Leave us,” she orders, imperious, and Robin leaves.

Emma is shellshocked, afraid to say a word, and Regina says, “Snow thinks Zelena is lurking at that farmhouse again. We should take a car down there now and see if we can find any sign of Rumple—" 

"Regina!” Emma says, eyes wide. “What about— You knew??” she demands. “How could you know??” She’s shaking and confused and angry at her own confusion.

“Of course I knew,” Regina says. “I took my soulmate card a year into the curse. Twenty-nine years ago,” she says. 

“You knew I was lying?” Emma whispers, and Regina finally drops the unconcerned act and looks at her, eyes warm.

“I knew you were the savior,“ she murmurs, taking Emma’s hand. "I knew you chose me. I’m sorry I never said anything. I thought you wanted it to be like this. I waited for you to tell me–” She inhales, long and cleansing. “I knew you were–”

And she reaches into her pocket and retrieves a card, worn and yellowing like she’s carried it with her every day. "I knew you were mine,“ she says, and turns the card so Emma can see _Emma Swan_ written across it in bold letters.

**Author's Note:**

> I know people wanted this to be expanded but I don't have enough hours in the day for that, lmao, and it was never going to make it to AO3 at all if I put it aside waiting to write it as a proper lengthy fic. Maybe someday!


End file.
